ARTS WATCH. Dance review.

Free Spirits

`Tap Dogs' Blends A Bit Of Macho With Slice Of Rock

January 16, 1997|By Sid Smith, Tribune Arts critic.

Pearl Jam blaring on loudspeakers before the show is a clue.

Then there's the row of exposed feet in work boots, the accompanying bodies hidden by a metal sheet. Suddenly, a stream of liquid pours down between a pair of legs--one of these guys seems to be urinating.

This is not your father's tap.

"Tap Dogs," six tap-dancing former factory workers from Australia, now at the Shubert Theatre, arrives as part of an exploding resurgence in tap and percussive dance. "Stomp" and "Riverdance"--both of which "Tap Dogs" at times gloriously resembles--have already played here. "Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk," Savion Glover's revealing romp through black history via tap, is yet to come, but, if the gods are with us, will tour eventually too.

But in the meantime "Tap Dogs" is an exciting, fun-loving, athletically feisty and often hilarious chapter in this ongoing story of a folk art's comeback. They are rock 'n' roll tappers, as well as swaggering, macho, self-assured, blue-collar ones: Their stance throughout, indeed the only thing resembling a plot, is their attitude, a kind of barroom one-upmanship more usually found in a contest to down the most whiskey shots.

Here it inspires a series of invigorating, boisterous, freewheeling tap extravaganzas, conducted on or about scaffolding and metal girders and platforms the guys themselves build--and sometimes destroy--as part of the program.

In some ways they use their workplace environment much more creatively than the "Stomp" folks. A series of ropes, set up in diagonals that recall an old ship, becomes an intricate set construction providing fodder for an intimate, visually arresting tap variation.

More obvious horseplay involves a series of microphoned floor panels that provide different noises and allow the dancers to create their own foot-controlled steel band.

A wide pan of water provides a seated, rough-and-tumble assault at one point (the front row of the audience thankfully was armed with plastic rain protection beforehand), while elsewhere the performers grab welding equipment and produce a spectacle of sparkles and an obstacle course for Dein Perry, the extraordinarily quick-footed leader of the pack.

There are also an extended finger-snapping bit and a slow, moody section where Perry and a young dancer named Ben Read sit for a spell, as if idling on a neighborhood door stoop, only to gradually break into a back-and-forth improvisational patter.

To assume these guys are "Stomp" imitations would greatly underestimate their talent and neglect the fact that this is tap, not performance percussion.

To watch the "Dogs" is to be reminded that tap is the human spirit finding blissful freedom through the feet.